Pops
by Katkero
Summary: Late visitors come to Whitebeard's grave.


_"At the end of the world is an island..."_

Crocodile had not seen fit to bring flowers with him, but apparently the pirate army that had taken part in the funeral had thought it completely natural to drown the ground around the headstones in a sea of flowers. At least the swords growing out of the ground here and there marked the spot as the final resting place of warriors.

"Hard to imagine that old devil there amidst roses and lilies," muttered Crocodile as he marvelled at the sight. There was something far more interesting for a pirate to look at atop the tombstones, but to his confusion Crocodile caught himself avoiding glancing up. He had thought he was over it already, and felt strangely humbled when he was forced to endure his too human emotions.

_"At the end of the world is an island, Raftel..."_

"I suppose they're meant to console the living more than the dead," Daz replied.

Humility was still a bit too close to humiliation for Crocodile's taste, so he defied his instincts and looked straight up at Whitebeard's memorial. The enormous captain's coat that he could have drowned in even as a grown man now hung from Whitebeard's beloved pole weapon like a sail torn from its rigging. Who could it have been that had the honour of sinking the bisentou into the stone as the grave was being prepared?

_"Raftel is the end of the journey and the beginning of a new one. The world is a circle, my boy... once you get to the end, you can only start from the beginning again."_

"Looks like neither the old man nor his son became Pirate King."

Daz glanced at Ace's and then Whitebeard's headstone, as though challenging them to react to such blasphemy. The dead remained silent. "We'll still continue our journey, though?"

Crocodile was silent for a moment. Yes, that was what he had promised, wasn't it. "To the end."

_"What, me?_ I_ have no need to be born again. But by all means, brat, you do as you wish..."_

It was as though Whitebeard himself had been hung from the spear like some garish showpiece, and Crocodile's jaws tightened around his cigar in sudden shock. From the top of the tombstone the end of one era looked down on him, as if asking if he thought himself capable of still starting a new one. All it took was the birth of a new Pirate King; only the death of one era that would let the world be born again.

"To... to the end, and then from the beginning again."

The old man had known Crocodile's dreams well; indeed, much of the friction between them came from the fact that in Crocodile's opinion, for one reason or another, Whitebeard didn't take them seriously. Although Crocodile never would have agreed to talk things through when the old man lived, that did not mean he didn't now, in his own way, grieve all the lost chances. The death of a human being... that too was a final destination and a new beginning, but one from where only the living walked on, always made lesser by their loss.

Crocodile realised he had let his emotions too close to the surface when he noticed Daz hard turned his eyes away considerately. He too looked away in shame, pushing his hand into an inside pocket. "Let's take care of the thing we've come here for in the first place." The bottle was undecorated and filled with something that Crocodile saw as completely substandard and downright poisonous, but that was what Whitebeard had liked in life and would surely still like now. Crocodile held the bottle down under his left arm and had to fight with the cork for a while - either before the cork agreed to come off or his hand agreed to stop trembling, he wasn't quite sure which one was refusing to cooperate.

"Well then, old man, a lot of stupid things happened between us and we didn't get along in your last years, but you always told me to..." Yes, it was the hand that was at fault there; the bottle was by no means heavy for a man of Crocodile's size, but it trembled all the same. "That if one day I should find a crew or at least one - well, this is Daz..."

As silence cut off Crocodile's introduction, Daz glanced up. He didn't much care for talking to the dead, but this was someone that was important to Crocodile, so he nodded politely at the headstone. "We already met once in Marineford, I recall."

"He followed me to Impel Down," Crocodile explained and started to feel uncomfortable with such a shameless display of emotions. "Anyway, we brought a gift, too. This should go down better than flowers." He glanced at Daz. "At least it did for him. If you ask me, it's only good for paint stripping... but let's have a drink anyway."

"I'm still steeling myself for it, so..." Daz said and took the cigar out of his captain's mouth.

Crocodile raised a brow at that. "Well you're certainly not suffering from a lack of nerve."

"Is it easier to drink out of a bottle with a cigar hanging off the corner of your mouth?"

"Likes to wise off, too," Crocodile commented to the headstone. But Daz was right, wasn't he; it was not as though the cigar could be neatly hung from Crocodile's hook or anything. "Have a smoke too, then, while you're at it." While Daz did just that, Crocodile fitted the large bottle steadily into his hand and bravely took a gulp. The booze peeled the lips off his teeth, leaving a terrible grimace of pain in its wake. "That brings back some memories... all right, your turn, give it a go."

Handing the cigar back, Daz drank as fast as he could. He at least controlled his expressions better. "And now for him?"

"Yes..." Crocodile had been planning this for quite a few weeks now and every now and then was so overcome by less pleasant memories that he imagined simply smashing the bottle open against the tomb. The feeling would no doubt come back sometimes, but right here it was gone; Crocodile stepped closer to the memorial, hesitating a moment, and reached over the flowers to pour the sake on Whitebeard's headstone. "Drink now while you can," he urged, "it's not much by your standards, but..."

But no longer could anyone tell Whitebeard to stop destroying his health, no longer did it matter. Had it been drinking that had ended his life, Crocodile would by no means be here right now to offer the man one last drink; now it was only appropriate since he had had the decency to die an honourable warrior's death, and all Crocodile was allowed to hope for was for the cheap booze to lick ugly trails into the gleaming white stone.

Just like Whitebeard's reputation and memory in the eyes of the world, the stone remained unsullied.

Crocodile weighed the almost empty bottle for a moment. "Of course, now that we're here... the old man liked that brat, so..." He poured the rest of the sake on Ace's headstone and was starting to feel quite ridiculous. Who could say with any certainty whether either of the pirates buried here was on some level aware of his stupid little ritual? Looked like this too was meant to console the living more than the dead. Still standing frozen, watching the last drops fall from the mouth of the bottle, Crocodile remembered Daz's presence again as he saw him bow silently to the graves - probably more out of respect to Crocodile than to the dead.

"...let's go, then."

"No last words to him?"

Crocodile shook his head. "It's not like talking ever did any good before." As they turned to the path leading back to the shore, Daz took the bottle from Crocodile's once more trembling hand without bothering to ask for permission. Who knew what he thought of his captain's bursts of emotion. "I hope you're happy, though."

"I didn't bring us here for the sake of my own happiness."

In a fit of awkwardness, Crocodile turned his face away and happened to take one last look at the graves over his shoulder. The coat hanging from the bisentou no longer made him think of Whitebeard's scarred body, freshly wounded to his last moments; it was, once more, simply the captain's enormous coat that he had always drowned in as a child and would still easily drown in now.

Although politeness prevented him from looking straight at him, Daz seemed to have noticed... "Got sand in my eye," Crocodile blurted, wiping at his face with annoyance.

"Of course," replied Daz, and the rest of the way they walked in a merciful silence.

* * *

I wasn't sure how to translate the bit about Whitebeard "amidst roses and lilies", because the song it's from (_Entre le bœuf et l'âne gris_) doesn't seem to be very popular in English. I couldn't think of a different song to use in English, so I'll settle for noting that Crocodile is not saying that Whitebeard is too manly for flowers or anything; the song is about baby Jesus, so Crocodile is just saying that Whitebeard was no saint.


End file.
